Darpa Initiative Will Focus on Advancing Deep Brain Stimulation
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I have a friend whom I can refer about this procedure.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/deep-brain-stimulation/MY00...
The one traumatic part of it is that some groups use a device popularized by some of the French groups that use a 5-microelectrode array for the mapping portion of the surgery, which has a 4x4 cross sectional spread. This probably pins and destroys a lot of the brain tissue in its path, but the people who use it claim it gives them "better spatial resolution" in the mapping recordings. Which doesn't apparently improve overall accuracy anyway, but some people are married to using that damn device.
Most surgeons in the US use 1-3 single electrode passes sequentially, which is a lot better.
So the usual caveats apply. You need to have tried other means (pharmacological, exercise), need to be healthy and willing to risk adverse consequences. In the case of the video linked, it is somewhat of a no brainer. The person is young 39 years old with a family. He seems to have a pretty bad case of Parkinsons. I'm sure he is willing to enjoy a much better quality of life even if it is risky.
They're trying to do some sort of closed loop feedback instead of some clinician inputting random settings of volts/frequency/pulse width into the device, but no one knows exactly what signals in the brain to listen for yet. The EE-oriented neuro types are looking at signal processing, i.e. using FFT's to look at power spectra of local recordings, etc, but nothing too promising yet.
As far as what the physiologic mechanism of the electrical stimulation does, no one really knows, but there's some data from monkeys and mice optogenetics suggesting it activates passing axonal fibers. Generally, nerves don't die due to the electricity, unless your surgeon does the implant French-style and shoves a 5-microelectrode array into your head, therefore boring a nice 2-4mm tunnel into your brain...
Otherwise, the most common side effects that could happen is that the stimulation causes some spasms or tingling. There's some hand-waving as to whether it may increase susceptibility to depression or falls, but that is hard to tease out between disease progression.
Of note, if it's Parkinson's, one hard part is that the meds will have to be adjusted a lot post-op which cause some folks problems.
In heading off some of the anticipated snark, this is very much a program with the goal of understanding basic science and developing tools to better understand how our brains work.
Currently, this is only available with invasive brain surgery that can often have complications. So money spent on better imaging and implant technologies will have a strong positive impact on the field.
Interestingly, the researchers I know in this area are confused about why such a big deal is being made about this "Brain Initiative" because the amount ($70M) is actually not a lot given how capital intensive this type of research is and how many labs it will be spread amongst. Still, any funding is better than no funding.
Minor point of clarification - while the surgeries to implant the electrode arrays are technically a neurosurgery, they're minimally invasive in the sense that it doesn't actually disturb or destroy any brain tissue since the motor cortex is accessible from the outer surface. The primary concerns now are not complications with surgery, but performance of the electrodes over timescales required by patients (several years minimum).
I'm not aware of any significant complications in any of the BrainGate clinical trial participants to date (if there have been, I'm not aware of them and would be a little surprised to hear it).
There's a slogan, "you're never the same after the air hits your brain". Is that hyperbole then?
70 mn. over five years is (naively) 14 mn. per year -- which is 0.05% of DARPA's budget.
But seriously, this research can enable us to understand brain better and help a lot of people.
Is there an equivalent of a tin foil hat that is available for subdermal implantation?
Kidding aside, military research has resulted in some of the most amazing stuff these days... like the entire space program and velcro.
Google then hired the team that won the last several competitions and kept the ball rolling.
Seems to me like this is the only path towards true innovation since companies are great at exploiting existing tech and making incremental and efficiency improvements but are usually really bad at making great leaps forward. If you provide incentives divorced from the market for desirable goals the market can later pick up the successes and build on them.
Google glass is not a moonshot. Google brain implant will be - just think about the SAT scores and all your collect test scores difference for those with brain implant and those without.